EN Real and virtual, past and present, impossible and possible: each of these oppositions is a tremendous opportunity to expand reality. The design experience that we propose aims to show a reality that doesn’t exist due to space and time barriers that we are accustomed to consider insurmountable: objects and monuments that belong to the past, or have been destroyed, or that were left in at the design stage and exist only on paper. History is also made with ifs and buts. “Missed” and “lost” buildings living a second life, therefore, intended to accommodate the widest range of cultural activities (cinema, music, dance, art) and build a new space that exposes the multiplicity and complexity of the many possible Venices: a cultural expo intended to mark the entrance to the city and giving a new image made of the balance between past, present and future.

The “bottom” is still made by the industrial landscape of Porto Marghera and by the surviving green areas surrounding it, against which these architectures, daring and familiar at the same time, establish and weave new relationships, building a space new and known at the same time. Compared to other forms of “collage” that marked the architectural debate of the twentieth century, the most original aspect is the role of the fund, not simply a connective element but the protagonist of the transaction and guarantor of the unity of heterogeneous “glued” designs.

The petrochemical industry, with its history, its size, its being a border area between land and water, and its strong potential for transformation thus becomes the place which reflects Venice: the unchanging city, the city where it is most difficult to build; but also the richest city that may become subject of a new reality, bringing to light what could have been and was not. The area of the former petrochemical industry in Porto Marghera, with its huge surface area and with its location between the lagoon, the San Giuliano park and the island city is one of the paradigmatic sites in order to consolidate the cosmopolitan city of Venice cultural capital and not just business city.

We will not address the many issues related to its development, ranging from the land reclamation and the high costs that this entails, to the many possible uses often in contradiction one with the other – just think of the past events related to the expansion of the seaport for the large ships with the disastrous consequences that this would have on an environmental system unique in the world and its impact on the city – but we want to take this opportunity to say enough is enough: enough to the commercial exploitation of the city and to his sell-off piece by piece to the highest bidder; enough to an architecture that is no longer able to find compelling answers, whose added value is assigned to some more or less successful landmarks, and not to the way the building relates to the stones and the light of this unique city, marking forever the history of architecture and of the city.